


Bound to Be A Better Ride (Than What You've Got Planned)

by imagined_melody



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Masturbation, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 03, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, improbable survival from a fatal gunshot wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2020-09-23 02:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20332450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: (Season 3 spoilers) Against all odds, a presumed-dead Alexei wakes up, and seeks out the only place he can really call home. Very much a 3x07 fix-it fic. These two will be safe and happy at all costs if I have anything to say about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (I've become so bad at summaries- I'm so sorry! I don't know why it's so difficult.
> 
> I've possibly more frustrated by this character death than any of the (arguably more important) other deaths in season 3, and this fic emerged from my feelings about that. If fandom had concentrations of study, I would have majored in hurt-comfort by now, so I hope that helps you with your post-s3 Murlexei feels too. (Side note: is that really the best ship name we can come up with? It looks like the name of a prescription medication.) 
> 
> I tried to indicate in the narration when characters who switch between languages (like Murray) are speaking English or Russian rather than using italics or some other visual indicator of that. It should be pretty clear what language is being spoken when, but obviously please tell me if it's not!
> 
> Title is from the song ['A Hazy Shade of Winter'](Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnZdlhUDEJo) by Simon and Garfunkel. I was struggling to come up with a title, so I started playing songs by a bunch of my favorite artists, and this one jumped out at me for reasons I can't quite explain.

The first breath screams its way out of Alexei. It sears through him like a grappling hook to the chest as he jolts back to consciousness. 

He gasps, and scrambles for purchase on the ground as though he’s falling, trying to get the lay of the land around him. He’s alone, and it’s dark, the kind of pitch dark that suggests late night. Alexei squints through smudgy glasses that want to slip off his face; he thinks he’s still in the fairgrounds, although not where he was when the agent shot him. Dimly, he remembers Murray moving him into an alley, somewhere he wasn’t likely to be found—but maybe the Russians just didn’t think him valuable enough to look too hard for his body once he was dealt with. At any rate, he must be out of the way enough that no one working for the carnival stumbled on him.

Through the darkness, he can see the hulking, still shapes of amusement park rides and funhouses. All their lights are off, and they lie dormant like barely breathing monsters.

For a few moments, he just sits there, slumped over and trying not to hyperventilate from the pain radiating through his body. He squeezes his eyes shut and recites mathematical equations in his head, repeating sequences of numbers as high as he can recall them before he gets distracted. As many digits of _pi_ as he can remember; prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, multiplication tables, whatever will center his mind and keep him grounded. Then he opens his eyes, and tries to formulate a plan for what to do.

Their team has several outposts scattered all around greater Hawkins, in addition to the main bases at Starcourt and the steelworks—hideaways where they keep supplies and communication backups so that if their location is compromised, all their necessaries aren’t kept in one place. The more secure facilities have guards, but some are just storage units, commandeered from abandoned basements or warehouses and disguised to look completely vacant. There’s one about a mile from here; Alexei can get into it, easy. 

He starts to get up, but his legs are unsteady; it’s hard to get his feet under him. Something falls from his lap when he struggles up to his knees. Alexei grabs at it, holds it up in the moonlight to try and see what it is: Murray’s shirt, bloodstained now and wrinkled beyond decency. Still, Alexei balls it up in his hands and, for a brief moment, brings a clean-ish section of the fabric up to his face to inhale what remains of Murray’s scent. It’s not a particularly attractive smell, but it’s familiar, and he clings to it. It might be the last sensory contact with Murray he’ll ever get.

(There was something there between them, he knows it like he knows his own name. They’d been heading towards a revelation that night, and he is sure that what he was feeling then is not unreciprocated. Murray does not entertain bullshit; he doesn’t believe in denying the truth of what he feels, and his abrasive personality is not as much of a mask as people seem to think it is. He never seemed to be trying to get rid of Alexei. That alone is a testament to the fact that there is _something_ between them, even if his instincts are wrong and it turns out to be platonic.)

He can’t take the shirt with him, though. There’s no point in carrying around a useless piece of bloody fabric, much as discarding it feels like heartbreak.

On a normal day, it would take Alexei maybe half an hour to walk a mile; but in the dark, in pain and weak, with legs that keep threatening to give out on him and only about a 50% certainty that he’s going in the right direction, he doesn’t arrive at the bunker until almost an hour later. The walk is completely silent but for the sounds of his own breath and the calls of nocturnal animals in the woods. The only other interruption comes when he looks up at the sky and sees a fleet of helicopters, half a dozen of them or more, speeding in the general direction of Hawkins. He thinks of the monsters that portal could have unlocked, the destruction the Russians were capable of inflicting, and wonders what kind of disaster has unfolded tonight. 

The outpost is little more than a shack in the woods, but it is secured by an electronic code system, the passcode for which has thankfully not been changed. Alexei hopes his using it doesn’t set off an alarm at some monitoring station. The last thing he needs is for someone to come investigating an unauthorized entry before he has managed to make a break for it.

Alexei turns on the slightly flickering overhead light and sags to the floor, beginning the slow process of removing his shirt. It’s damp with perspiration and sticking to his body where the blood has adhered it to his skin. When he tries to peel it off, it pulls at the wound, and he bites back a cry of pain. Finally it’s off, and after lifting the bottom of his undershirt, he gets a damp cloth and scrubs away some of the blood so he can finally get a good look at the injury.

He doesn’t know if the bullet went all the way through, or if it’s still in him somewhere; there’s no mirror, and if he tries to reach behind himself to feel, he’s fairly certain he’ll pass out again. There’s a definite dampness against the fabric on his back, but then again, he’s pouring sweat, from the midsummer heat and the pain both. The bullet hole in his gut is still trickling blood a little, although not heavily. Touching it brings searing pain, and every time he prods at it his vision goes a little fuzzy.

He is very suddenly, and very palpably, afraid.

The memory comes to him suddenly, unbidden, of something that had happened earlier that day. _He walks back into Murray’s hideout after handing the car keys back to the cop, sits back down on the couch, and takes another slightly resentful bite of his semi-crushed food. He could have run, he thinks. He could have been far away by now, and in a nice car to boot. But something makes him suspect he’s probably better off here._

_Murray is looking at him, as if trying to dissect him with his intense gaze. “Are you afraid of me?” he abruptly asks in Russian._

_Alexei shrugs. He’s not, really—Murray, for all his bluster and aloofness, is harmless. Alexei doesn’t think he’s capable of actual malevolence. He’s seen enough evil men to know. _

_“Of her, then?” Murray says with a broad grin. He gestures with his head to the woman arguing strenuously with the policeman in the corner._

_Alexei snorts. “Not of him, obviously.” The big man is hostile, but Alexei strongly suspects he’s too dumb to be any kind of a real threat. _

_Murray is still staring at him. “Then why did you come back?” The words sound strangely vulnerable coming out of the American’s mouth, and Alexei thinks maybe it’s just a fluke, an error in expressiveness from someone speaking a language other than their native tongue. But something in Murray’s eyes says that it’s not._

_“Why does it matter?” he asks, to distract from the sudden intimacy of the situation—although his gaze hasn’t once left Murray’s, and the eye contact is becoming intense._

_Murray grins again. All his smiles are wolfish, too-large and sharp-edged in a way that Alexei suspects is meant to keep people at arm’s length. “Hopper said you wouldn’t leave because you’d be too scared of the Russians to go back,” he says. “I’d hate to have to admit he was right about something.” He gives a short laugh, and Alexei smiles along with him despite himself. The joke feels like a secret shared between them, or a strange peace offering._

_“You know why,” Alexei says, after a beat. “You know why they took me.” He flicks his eyes back to the other two Americans again._

_“They needed a scientist,” Murray says with a frown. “You were just there, the easiest one to get, the first one they found.”_

_“No,” Alexei corrects, his voice gently firm. “They took me because I am—” He cast about for the right word. “Expendable. It does not matter if I am abducted, because if I go back they will kill me anyway. So I might as well… cooperate.”_

_Alexei cannot be afraid of Murray and his two strange friends, because he has seen men choked to death for incompetence and insufficient performance; because he has witnessed the horror of what the Russian military is cultivating in that underground lab; because he knows that if he returns, disgraced from having been overpowered by foreign agents and potentially having compromised the secrecy of the mission, he will be murdered on sight. The Americans are a motley crew of frenetic, high-strung civilians who appear to have seen a truly improbable amount of suspicious activity, but they are not dangerous. They are—protective. If he can help, he has nothing to fear from them._

_And to be honest, he sort of likes them. Especially the man sitting next to him right now._

_He is not afraid._

Now, his blood sluggishly soaking through his clothes and with help coming from no possible source, Alexei feels the cold rush of fear that maybe he should have felt all along.

He wraps the wound as best he can, replacing the bloodied shirt with another fresh one from the lockers here at the base. It’s not a uniform shirt, thankfully; he doesn’t know if he can wear something that uncomfortable right now, to say nothing of the disgust he feels at potentially having to put on the insignia of his former employers. There’s not much in the way of medical supplies around, but he does get some gauze on top of the entry wound and then wraps his torso in as much of the sparse bandaging as he can find, tight as his tired hands will allow so that it will keep pressure on the gash. He spends a long time scouring the place for painkillers or even antibiotics as a precaution, but apparently they don’t keep medication within easy reach on the premises. At this point, all Alexei wants is the strongest form of pain relief he can get his hands on. His skin feels clammy and he needs water. There are some jugs of water in the stockpile, luckily, and he gulps some down and packs another in a bag, along with some maps and basic necessities, before closing everything behind him and making sure he’s left no trace, bloody clothes thrown into the garbage for (he hopes) no one to find.

The problem now is where to go. If he is going to die, he doesn’t want to die here anymore than he did at the fairgrounds. He briefly thinks of trying to make his way to Hawkins, where at least he knows a couple of people—if he can locate a police station, he might be able to track down the big dumb policeman, who could help him find somewhere safe. But then he remembers the flood of emergency helicopters heading towards the town, and the fact that all the people who want to kill Alexei are currently there. Going to Hawkins would be just as likely to land him in a trap as it would to bring him safety.

That only leaves one place he can think to go, but he doesn’t know how he could possibly get there on foot. Illinois is almost three hours away, if he remembers correctly from the ride with the Americans; that would be probably more than a day on foot, and Alexei can barely stand already. Dying next to the highway while trying to cross state lines doesn’t sound like a better option than the ones he’s already thought of. But if he could find a car, he just might make it.

Or he might lose consciousness and run himself off the road. But it’s worth a try.

This supply base isn’t exactly a vehicle depot, but he walks a circle around the perimeter anyway, searching for a getaway car or some other means of transportation he could possibly commandeer. And in a stroke of luck—one of the only ones he’s had tonight, all things considered—he sees a little lean-to on the corner of the property and opens it on a hunch. There it is: a car, old from the looks of it, probably meant as a backup in case they needed a way to get around that didn’t look suspicious. If that was its purpose, there would be a set of keys on the ground under the car, next to the front driver’s side tire, he knows. Bending down to check is agony, but he falls to his knees next to the car, clutching his side against the pain with one hand as he goes down, and with the other feels around the dirt-spattered rubber.

His fingers touch metal.

There’s no time to waste: Alexei tucks the key into the palm of his hand, wrenches open the car’s door, and scrambles inside. He’s not entirely sure where he’s going, but a quick study of the map gives him the names and route numbers of major highways leading to Chicago, and he’s pretty sure he can figure out the rest from there. (The two Americans had been somewhat less than intimidating captors, but their abduction of Alexei had still technically been kidnapping; he’d taken careful note of road names and landmarks so he could find his way back to safety if things took a turn for the worse, and if he focuses with all his might now he can still recall them.) With a deep breath he starts the engine of the vehicle, glances to make sure there’s a full tank of gas, turns the air conditioning up as high as it will go to balance out his almost feverish body temperature, and pulls out onto the dirt road leading away from the compound. With any luck, in a few hours he’ll be home safe with his friend.

-

It’s almost 5:00 in the morning when he finally makes it through the gates and onto Murray’s property, turning off his headlights as he approaches so he’s less conspicuous. There are no lights on in the place—not that Alexei really expects there to be, at this time of the night and with Murray as cautious as he is—but as he stumbles out of the car and tries to reorient himself to standing, fighting back a wave of dizziness, it occurs to him that he doesn’t actually have any reason to believe Murray will be here at all. Whatever the three Americans had encountered when they got to the shopping mall may not even be over yet. Even if it is, Murray may not have had time to drive all the way back to Chicago. Or they could be kidnapped by Russian agents. They might not even be alive. 

But the door to the bunker is flung open before he can even raise his hand to knock. (Dimly, it occurs to Alexei that Murray had probably seen him approaching on the security feed—that he has, in fact, probably been watching the cameras obsessively after what happened that night. The man is paranoid on the best of days, he senses; on the night after an actual attack, though, he has good reason for vigilance.) From the outside, the compound had looked dark, but there’s at least one single lamp on in the living room, shielded from view by heavy blackout curtains. Murray himself looks freshly showered, and too wired to have been asleep, but his eyes are exhausted beyond belief. He’s put even less care into his appearance than usual, and through the gaps in the ill-fitting clothing Alexei can see the outlines of bruises, new and dark and mottling. Whatever happened that night did not leave either of them unscathed.

The expression on the man’s face suggests that the sight of Alexei is more than his brain can handle at the end of this very long night. His eyes are wide, and for a split second he stands so still it’s like he’s turned into a statue. Then he stammers, “Holy _shit_.”

Alexei attempts to take his hands off his throbbing side for long enough to hold them up in a sarcastic _ta-da_ gesture. “Surprise,” he manages weakly.

Murray pulls him in through the door by the arm and shuts it behind them. There’s no sign of either of their two friends from earlier now; the bunker is blessedly and utterly quiet. “You were—you got—I thought you were dead,” he says, looking Alexei up and down frantically. 

Maybe it’s the shock and stress of the day, or the euphoria of making it back here to the man he has grown to care about, but Alexei tries again for humor. “Did you miss me?” he jokes, and then he can’t think of something clever to say next, because Murray is kissing him.

It’s a lot more intense than any first kiss Alexei’s ever had, that much is for sure. Murray kisses him with enough force that he feels swept off his feet. It’s passion bordering on desperation, and no monster attack on this earth could stop Alexei from returning it with equal fervor. He moves his lips into the kiss, lets his tongue join in with a filthy curl, and Murray moans and grabs at his hips. A sudden lightning-strike of desire floods through Alexei. His blood feels hot, nerve endings lighting up at the promise of new and pleasant sensations; in the lower half of his body, things stir and start to take an interest as well. Alexei moves one hand to the small of Murray’s back, stroking to guide him forward, and his back is against the wall before he can blink. They’re both making sounds, little amazing turned-on noises that Alexei is shocked to hear coming from his own mouth, but which he wants to hear Murray make forever.

Then Murray crowds in as close as he can, a movement that puts sudden pressure on the wound where Alexei’s torso was ripped open—and the flash of pain that follows washes all arousal and pleasure from his body. He clamps his lips together just in time to stifle the agonized howl that pulls its way up his throat. It’s not a pretty sound; it would have been a scream if he’d let it out. Alexei flinches into a defensive ball, suddenly feeling as though his whole body is on fire in a very different way. Adrenaline and shock had pushed the injury into the periphery of his awareness, but now it jolts back to the forefront of his mind again. The pain is unbelievable.

“Alexei, _shit_—” Murray is saying, and then he is reaching to tear open the front of Alexei’s shirt, to look at the damage for himself. Another vehement curse, in English this time, leaves his lips. “You did a terrible job with this,” he says weakly, and Alexei knows it’s meant to be a wry quip to lighten the mood, but the fear in Murray’s voice drains any levity from his words.

Alexei tries to look down, although his vision is still a little fuzzy from the tidal wave of pain. He can see that the entry wound is aggravated; it’s bleeding slightly again, and the skin around it is red, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s getting infected or whether that’s just irritation from how insufficiently he’s protected it. His mouth works, and no coherent words come out—just a worried sound that has Murray’s hands on him in an instant. He soothes a gentle thumb over Alexei’s temple and turns his face away from the sight of his own blood.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” Murray murmurs. Alexei starts to panic again, starts to mutter _no, no, it’s dangerous_, but the other man shushes him before he can get more than a couple syllables out. “Believe me, a town like this, it won’t be the strangest thing they’ve seen. Trust me, sweetheart.”

Alexei shudders. He wants to throw up, to pass out, to cry, to kiss Murray again. It’s his body going into overdrive, he knows, but he’s starting to feel like he’s maybe not in control of himself anymore, and it’s terrifying. He nods at Murray, starts to straighten up and move forward, and feels his knees buckle and give out from beneath him. Murray catches him as he stumbles. 

“Jesus,” he mutters, in English. A string of other words follow, unintelligible to Alexei’s ears, but he doesn’t mind. If Murray wanted him to know what he was saying, he would have used their common language. It’s grounding enough just to hear the man’s voice.

With Murray supporting as much of his weight as possible on his own body, he hustles Alexei off to the car. Alexei tries to buckle his own seatbelt, but his hands are shaking, he realizes when he looks at them dumbly. He hadn’t felt the trembling, but they’re clumsy and aimless now, refusing to grasp what he wants them to. He fumbles until Murray slides into the driver’s seat. “Stop that,” the other man scolds, and bats Alexei’s hands aside to reach over and tug the seatbelt into place. 

Alexei slides back in the fabric-covered seat. He feels dizzy and far away, and he tries to focus on Murray’s face, with great effort and very little success. “I don’t think I will be able to stay awake until we get to the hospital,” he admits apologetically, words slurring already. He knows in the movies, people are always supposed to _stay awake, stay with me_, but his grip on the world is slipping.

Murray nods, lips pressed tight, and starts the car. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.” He sighs heavily, like he’s gathering himself. “I’ve got you,” he repeats quietly, and Alexei wonders if he was even meant to hear.

The car lurches into motion, and Alexei closes his eyes wearily, overcome by exhaustion and dizziness and the faint nausea of sudden movement. He can feel his heartbeat in his bones, racing faster than he thinks it should. He breathes in as deep as he can, shocked by the rasping sound clinging to the end of it. It doesn’t feel like enough air.

“Alexei—” he hears Murray say, urgent and soothing at once, and it’s the last thing he hears before his senses fade out.

\--- 

Hours later, Alexei blinks his eyes open again. He feels warm, but clean, and comfortable—the pain has dimmed to a dull ache now that someone has dosed him with medication; he has the light out-of-body feeling that suggests morphine. There is a strange feeling of heaviness across his abdomen. Lifting his head with unusually great effort, Alexei strains to look. The sight makes his throat tighten and his eyes go soft.

Murray is crammed into the bed next to him, taking up as much space as he can even though he’s restricted to the very edge, between Alexei’s body and the bedrail that keeps them contained inside. He’s fast asleep, and his arm is flung across Alexei’s stomach. It’s such a comforting weight that the Russian feels tears pricking at his eyes. He is grounded here, safe. Murray won’t let him go.

He is still tired; he is starting to feel like he cannot remember what it was like not to be tired. But if Murray is here, then the danger must be far enough away not to concern him. There is plenty of time to rest, and no better company with which to do so.

And maybe later, Alexei can start to make good on the promise of that kiss he and Murray had shared earlier.

\---

In actuality, Alexei spends the entire day in too much pain to do anything.

They’re still giving him the good drugs, but either the dosage is decreasing or his body is already getting used to them, because everything hurts. He tries to sleep it off as much as he can, but any rest is fitful and interrupted as he jolts awake anytime the aching in his stomach throbs too sharply. He knows he must be making sounds of pain in his sleep: more often than not, when he floats back to consciousness, Murray’s hand is smoothing back his hair, his voice murmuring soothing nonsense into his ear. 

He remembers only an indistinguishable blur of moments from the rest of the night before: the flashing lights of the emergency bay as Murray and a team of medics lifted him out of the car; the stabbing pain the first time doctors touched the wound in his gut; a nurse wiping a cool cloth across his face to clean away the sweat. Murray fills him in on the rest. He’s had surgery, mostly to close the wound rather than to repair any serious internal damage—he’s lucky that the bullet didn’t go very deep into him, and stayed lodged close to the surface without irreparably harming any crucial organs. (“The woodpecker saved you,” Murray murmurs, and Alexei laughs even though he wants to cry.) His blood loss was a concern, but the doctors had been able to do a transfusion and administer fluids, and he was closely monitored until his heart stopped racing and his blood pressure stabilized. He is lucky that most of his bleeding occurred at the moment he was shot: because the blood loss slowed on its own, having miraculously avoided hitting anything central that could cause hemorrhaging, he’d been at a low risk of bleeding out. 

When the nurses or doctors come in, Murray doesn’t bother to translate back and forth between them. He does all the talking for Alexei, makes the decisions and asks all the questions, and then afterward he reports back to Alexei what was said. Alexei doesn’t mind. He’s out of his element here, overwhelmed by the new stimuli and the unfamiliar language and culture as well as his weakened physical state, and he doesn’t much want to interact with anyone other than his friend. He knows if he objects to anything Murray decides, Murray will go and tell the doctors to change it—and if he says he wants to be the one who talks to them himself, Murray will interpret for them. But right now, he just wants to rest.

The only time he feels any better is at the end of the day. By dinnertime, he’s feeling the first stirrings of hunger he’s had since he woke up at the fairgrounds; his stomach rolled at the idea of food before that, and he’d had to choke down even the smallest bit of his first two meals, curling up in a ball afterward and fighting the urge to bring it all up again. Murray turns on the television, satisfied that Alexei has rested enough that he can use a little distraction now, and after his evening dose of medication the nurses leave them alone for a while, finished with all their follow-up tests and willing to just check up on him every so often. 

In the evening, Murray uses the room phone to call Joyce—the woman who had helped kidnap Alexei, although he hardly thinks of it as _kidnapping_ anymore—and tell her what is going on. Joyce makes him teach her how to say “Feel better soon” in Russian; her clumsy, broken attempt makes Alexei laugh until he winces in pain. But he does feel better, warm with the idea that someone cares. “Thank you. I needed that,” he manages to say after he’s done laughing and breathing through the aching in his side. Murray starts to translate for him, but Joyce interrupts before he can finish.

“I know what he said,” she says in her soft motherly voice. “I know, honey.”

He lies there with the faint sounds of cartoons on the TV in one ear and Murray’s strident voice chatting away on the phone in the other, the two comforting sounds mingling together and feeling more like home than anything Alexei has felt in over a year. And then, as he looks at the wall and lets his mind drift, he feels the tips of Murray’s fingers slip between his own. It’s the smallest of gestures, just the brushing of a hand against his skin, but it’s the strongest sensation he’s felt aside from pain in the last eighteen hours. He twitches his own fingers over the other man’s in return, as a silent acknowledgment of the affection. 

Eventually, Murray hangs up the phone, leans forward in his awkward hospital chair, and lays his head down on the bed tiredly. “She sounded sad,” Alexei comments. They both know why. Murray has told him everything that happened the night before, in the hours between the attack at the fairgrounds and his arrival at the bunker.

Murray lifts his head slightly. He still looks weary, worn-thin, and Alexei knows it’s not just because the man was worried about him. The night before, he heard stories of a monster so horrifying it would haunt anyone’s dreams for weeks; multiple children were put in mortal danger that they only narrowly escaped; at least two innocent lives were lost, and a third—Alexei—had, until now, been presumed dead. Alexei fiercely wishes he were not in the hospital right now. Murray deserves to be at home, in his own bed, recovering from the stress and trauma of what he’s been through. 

“She has her son back,” Murray says after a moment. “Both of her sons. I don’t think she’s really let herself think about the rest of it yet.”

“_You_ need to _stop_ thinking about it,” Alexei chides, but his voice is soothing. “It’s over now.” Murray scoffs and takes a breath, ready to launch into a tirade about how little they can really be sure of that, and Alexei cuts him off. “No, no no no—do not start this with me. It’s done.”

Murray has been resting all day too—or, more accurately, he’s _supposed_ to be resting. By the time Alexei had been situated in a hospital bed with stable vital signs, the other man had been under so much physical and mental stress that he had a piercing migraine. He turned out, in addition to exhaustion and shock, to be critically dehydrated. So the nurses had fussed over him as well. (It was part of the reason, he has learned, that Murray was allowed to lie down in bed with him while he was asleep.) At least one of them has taken to asking, “So how you holding up, handsome?” and winking at Murray whenever she enters the room. Alexei doesn’t understand what she is saying, but he knows it must be something embarrassing from the look on Murray’s face, and that alone brings him a satisfying sense of glee.

The only interruptions to their solitude come when dinner arrives—a bland mixture of pale vegetables, applesauce, and other foods that are low in flavor and easy on the stomach—and when the nurse pokes her head in one final time to make sure Alexei is comfortable and to check that he’s not experiencing a worsening of any symptoms. (She also helps him to the bathroom one more time, a task he has not yet been willing to sacrifice his dignity enough to ask Murray to do.) Alexei knows, even without the aid of any translation services, that she advises Murray to go home for the night; he can tell what she’s suggested just from Murray’s irritated reaction. Alexei has tried to convince him of this too, but Murray has barely left his side long enough to get food or coffee for himself, much less to exit the hospital grounds entirely and leave him alone without company or assistance.

He does report back, after she’s left, that the hospital thinks Alexei will be discharged within the next few days, if he takes it easy and continues to heal without complications or side effects. The surgery was fairly minor, and after a couple days of monitoring, he should be able to recover the rest of the way at home. Alexei thinks of that whenever he feels restless, or bored, or when the pain bothers him to the point of frustration. He and Murray both have come such a long way in the past few days. _Just a little longer_, he thinks. _A little while longer, and everything will be all right._

\---

That night, Murray doesn’t try to sleep with him in the hospital bed. But Alexei does blink awake in the darkness of late night—2:30 in the morning, if he’s reading the clock right—to the feel of Murray’s lips grazing across his cheek. He makes a disoriented, confused sound; Murray strokes a finger over his mouth, tenderness silencing his impulse to question. The man is a dark, looming figure over his bedside, and Alexei can’t make out his expression or any specific features. But he knows what Murray wants, and what he wants as well.

When Murray leans forward to kiss him, he is ready.

Their lips collide clumsily in the dark, and Alexei inhales into the kiss as they orient themselves to each other. He strains upward to get closer, suddenly desperate for it. Naturally, the movement jars his injuries—they’ve given him a higher dose of painkillers to help him sleep better at night, but it’s not enough to dull the pain completely—and he whimpers as the burning soreness floods through him. But Murray has him safe and steady. He runs a gentle hand down Alexei’s side, calms the tension right out of his muscles, and guides him fully back down on the bed. And he doesn’t stop kissing him, not until they are short of breath and Alexei looks dazed for a reason other than the fact that his nerves are frayed with pain.

“I was scared,” Murray finally whispers, as though he could only feel safe saying the words in the darkness and cover of night. “When you passed out in the car. I thought you would be dead before we got to the hospital. I was so scared.”

Alexei strokes his thumb over Murray’s cheek. Then he says, sleepily but cheekily, “_You_ were scared?”

Murray laughs despite himself; he sounds surprised at it. “Asshole,” he chuckles, and tugs on Alexei’s ear in retaliation. 

“You need to sleep, Murray,” Alexei urges. “How many hours have you slept? Three? Four? You will give yourself another headache if you do not rest.” In recounting the events of the previous day, Alexei had learned that Murray had only just arrived home minutes before their reunion—he’d had time only for a shower and a drink before hearing the car pull into his driveway. In the time before that, he had been engaged in a high-stakes infiltration mission from which he’d barely escaped with his life, undergone intense physical and emotional strain, and afterwards, been interrogated for over an hour by government agents before being released after a cursory medical check for the three-hour late-night drive home. And then, before he’d gotten to even lie down in bed, Alexei had turned up and both of them had rushed to the emergency room. Those few hours of rest in the hospital bed, as well as some restless dozing in the waiting room during the surgery, were all the sleep he’d had in almost forty-eight hours.

“Joyce told me that too, on the phone,” Murray admits. “You’re both insufferable mother hens.”

“I knew I liked her,” Alexei says. 

Murray sighs. “I just want to keep an eye on you,” he worries. “Make sure you’re all right.”

“I will be fine,” Alexei says. “You have good doctors here. I want you to rest. And you know what happens when I don’t get what I want.” He leans close enough for their noses to touch, and whispers, “I don’t cooperate.”

Murray’s gaze darts up to him. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Alexei doesn’t know if he _would_ actually refuse to follow legitimate medical advice to convince Murray to do as he says, but at this stage, he’s not willing to rule it out as leverage, either. “Go out to the nurse’s desk,” he instructs. “Do not come back until they’ve given you a pillow and a blanket. You can sleep with me or in the chair, but I want you asleep in the next thirty minutes.”

Murray looks like he doesn’t know whether to be affronted, impressed, or compliant. Either way, he’s stunned into silence—a rare thing in itself. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” he finally says, and Alexei smiles sunnily at him, sleepy and triumphant and willing to let himself be easily flattered.

In the end, Murray refuses to sleep in the bed with Alexei. He mutters some bullshit excuse about how Alexei needs to not be disturbed and how he’s not even sure he’ll be able to sleep, but Alexei suspects the truth is that he’s worried about how it will look, the two of them sharing a bed like that. He makes a cocoon for himself in the chair instead, limbs curled into an awkward sprawl and his head poking cartoonishly out from his blanket burrow. Alexei can’t help but smile at it. “Comfortable?” he asks Murray’s shadowy profile, after he’s dimmed the lights again.

“Fuck you,” Murray grumbles back, and Alexei snorts out a laugh, helplessly charmed despite himself.

Exhausted as he is, he still fights back sleep until he hears Murray’s breathing even out into deep sleep-breaths, until he is sure that the other man is out for good and not likely to wake up. Then he closes his eyes and between one breath and the next, he is asleep himself.


	2. Not an End, But A Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the end, Murray’s stubborn refusal to leave Alexei’s side is forced into an impasse by Joyce Byers’ arrival at the hospital the next day._
> 
> A series of moments and impressions in Alexei's early recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, hi, everyone. It's been just over a year since I posted the first chapter of this story. I've been working on the second part since literally the day after the first one was posted, but it took this long to get it written and posted. Surprise! I hope it makes a nice treat for you.
> 
> To be honest, I'm hoping the chapter will actually be worth the year's wait. The final draft clocks in at a hefty 7500 words, but it doesn't exactly have a _plot_, per se- the scenes are chronological for the most part, but each one is a little new dynamic in Murray and Alexei's relationship with each other and the found family they're creating together. I didn't worry too much about finding plot events or conflict or even too much transitional exposition to tie them together. I think it still works, and I hope you do too.
> 
> As in the first chapter, while I try to specify explicitly on occasion whether a character is speaking English or Russian, I'm not using italicized text or any other real visual indicator when someone is speaking another language, and sometimes the language being spoken is just inferred. For instance, obviously, you can assume Alexei and Murray are speaking Russian to one another unless it's directly stated otherwise. Hopefully that's not too confusing!

In the end, Murray’s stubborn refusal to leave Alexei’s side is forced into an impasse by Joyce Byers’ arrival at the hospital the next day.

Both he and Alexei sleep through the night, but for Murray, the consequences outweigh the benefits. He wakes up with an aching back and limbs so stiff he can barely move them. Alexei’s expression is a mixture of pity, concern, and a strongly implied _I told you so_ that just makes Murray even grumpier. Eventually, Alexei orders him to go down to the cafeteria for breakfast. “So I can get a break from you for a minute,” he says irritably in Russian, Murray’s bad mood rubbing off on him too.

So Murray sulks down to the cafeteria, sulks through his morning coffee and stale breakfast, and by the time he makes his way back up to the hospital room, he’s sulking a little bit less. The food and the sleep, however inadequate, have made him feel a little better after everything he put himself through yesterday. It’s not enough—he’s still not anywhere close to his normal physical condition, and the trauma and stress of the last few days are lurking in the back of his mind, bound to catch up with him sooner or later. But he no longer feels like his head is going to explode, and a full day’s remove from the attacks has made him less prone to expect danger around every corner.

The nurse brings breakfast for Alexei, and a Popsicle as a treat, which makes the Russian unreasonably delighted. Murray is watching him all-but-fellating the frozen dessert, idly musing on what a shame it is that he’s too tired and uncomfortable to feel arousal at the sight, when the door to the hospital room opens and Alexei’s eyes light up for a different reason.

“Joyce!” he exclaims. He struggles with the j in her name, pronounces it “Zhoyse,” but Murray knows what he’s saying before he even turns around.

“Oh, shit,” he groans.

Joyce ignores him, already putting her bag down on the spare chair by the door. “Alexei!” she says in the loud, too-broad way she tends to speak to him. They look at one another for a second, both smiling, trying to discern where the boundaries are between them. Then Joyce leans down and wraps him in a hug. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” she whispers, and Alexei’s arms tighten around her, knowing her emotion even without comprehending the words. 

“Мне жаль,” Alexei murmurs in reply, and Murray wonders what he’s apologizing for: Hopper’s death, or his own affiliation with the Russians that killed him, or maybe just for scaring her by being presumed dead. They’ve never talked about it—never had the chance to—but Murray supposes Alexei must be carrying a fair amount of guilt on his own shoulders. Maybe it helps just to apologize, even to one person.

He’d almost gotten over his earlier grumpiness, but a wave of irritability washes over him again at Joyce’s presence, for reasons he can’t rationally explain. He doesn’t try to keep it off his face, and he can tell it shows; Alexei glares at him as Joyce sits down on the side of his bed, an expression that Murray has no trouble translating. _Don’t be an asshole._

He tunes back into the conversation just in time to hear her say, “So anyway, I thought I’d come up for the night, just to help out.” She’s facing Alexei, but her words are in English and her tone is normal, so she’s clearly talking to Murray.

“Don’t you have children you need to be taking care of?” _One more child than you had before,_ Murray thinks, and swallows against the wave of sobering regret that washes over him.

“They’ll be fine,” Joyce says. “I left Jonathan in charge for the night, and I’ll be back tomorrow. They can go over to one of the other kids’ houses if they need anything. Plus,” she adds, her own face going sad and somber, “with everything they’ve been through the past few days, they need to be with each other more than anything else, I think.”

Murray turns to Alexei. “She wants to stay,” he explains in Russian. “Until tomorrow. To help, she says.”

Annoyingly, Alexei’s eyes light up. “Yes!” he says eagerly, in English—one of the few words he knows. Joyce beams too, spurred on by his excitement, and Murray’s scowl deepens in response. He’s protective of the delicate balance they’ve found themselves in; the idea of relinquishing even the slightest bit of control to someone else feels like negligence, like inviting disaster. There are four of them in the room right now—Alexei, Murray, Joyce, and the nurse performing routine checks on her morning rounds—and even this many people looking after Alexei seems stifling and unnecessary.

“Jesus, one guy with a bullet wound doesn’t need this many people taking care of him,” he grumbles, aware that he sounds like a petulant child.

Joyce nods solemnly. “Absolutely, I agree. That’s why I’m going to stay here with Alexei, so he doesn’t have to be alone. And you’re going to go home.” Murray barks out a strangled sound of indignant protest; Joyce ignores it. “Alexei can handle being without you for a few hours, Murray. And you need to get out of here for a while. For your own sake.” She shrugs and offers him a half-smile. “It’s the best plan.”

“It’s a shitty plan, and no fucking way am I doing it.”

The nurse, currently fussing with Alexei’s medication IV, gives him a reproving look for his profanity. Murray knows it’s mostly for appearances’ sake, though; he heard her use some pretty spicy language herself yesterday afternoon, when they both happened to duck out to the loading dock for a cigarette break at the same time. She’s funny, and she has an attitude on her powerful enough to rival his own. He thinks under different circumstances, he’d even flirt with her a little—but he’s seen the way she was eyeing up one of the other female nurses with interest as the woman left for the evening, and he thinks maybe he wouldn’t get very far on that front even if he did try.

And, of course, he has someone now. Even if they haven’t had a chance to talk about what this is, what it means for them. 

“You don’t even speak Russian,” Murray points out. “What if he needs something? Who’s gonna translate for him?”

Joyce looks on the verge of rolling her eyes. “What is he really going to need, Murray? He’s in the hospital. He eats, sleeps, watches TV, has to go to the bathroom every so often. I’m sure we can find a way to communicate about that. And if something’s wrong, he can…well, he can say ‘help’ or something, and I’ll get a doctor.”

Murray turns to Alexei. “She says that if I leave and something goes wrong, you should say ‘help’ and she’ll figure it out, who fucking knows how.” He says all of it in Russian except the word _help,_ which he enunciates as clearly as he can in English for Alexei.

Alexei looks at Joyce. “Help,” he says in English, and then points to Murray, and then the door.

The nurse cackles from over by the supply cabinet in the corner, where she’s taking off her medical gloves. “Do you know you’re my favorite patient?” she tells Alexei. Alexei beams uncomprehendingly at her.

Murray’s scowl deepens like he’s working up a head of steam that will result in him feeling genuinely offended, so Alexei rolls his eyes and beckons him over to lean down next to him in the bed. They mutter to each other in Russian for a long time. At one point, Murray hears the nurse say to Joyce, “Let me show you something out here for a minute,” and take her arm to lead her out of the room. It occurs to Murray that she’s trying to give them some privacy. He thinks she might know why they need it, and he feels a rush of gratitude for her discretion. It’s almost strong enough to overpower his anxiety at the idea of someone knowing this about him, when having feelings like these hasn’t always been safe.

Alexei’s eyes track their departure, too. Once the door has shut and the two women aren’t visible through the window, he cranes his neck up to kiss Murray’s forehead. “Go home,” he urges. “I am getting better, being here. You are not. You should be getting better too.”

“Bullshit. I’m fine,” Murray grumbles. Alexei pinches his side and he yelps. “I don’t remember giving you permission to order me around, asshole.”

Alexei grins. “Maybe you should give me permission, then,” he purrs. Murray looks stunned, and then a faint laugh escapes him, and Alexei knows he’s made a tiny crack in the other man’s stubborn resistance. He leans forward and drops a kiss on his lips, then a second, and a third, until he pulls away and Murray is chasing him for another. “Go home,” he says again to Murray’s dazed face. 

In the end, he caves under the combined pressure of Alexei and Joyce and agrees to leave. Murray gives strict instructions to call if Alexei needs him at any point, listing off details about the other man’s medical condition and current routine until Joyce is all but pushing him out the door. He looks back just long enough to see Alexei’s cheerful wave, and tries to ignore the sinking feeling that plagues him at the idea of leaving the man alone, since letting him out of his sight once had such disastrous consequences. 

But the Russian agents who attacked them at the carnival are gone, and the Mind Flayer is gone, and he knows they are as safe as they can be. Alexei will be there when he gets back.

He just wishes he could really believe it.

\---

Murray goes home, lies down in bed, and sleeps for the next fifteen hours.

It’s just after midnight when he blinks his eyes open again. He feels like he’s been run over by a truck, but somehow it’s not a bad feeling. He hadn’t realized his body had been coasting by on fumes, in a kind of survival mode after all the stress of the last two days, until he let himself properly rest. His mind is less frantic now; though he’s still sore from not having moved in so long, he’s calm and alert. He feels good.

There’s no point in going back to the hospital until morning. The staff have been wonderful about letting Murray stay with Alexei around the clock, after he told them that Alexei had no relations here and didn’t speak any English—but they’ll only allow one person to be with him at a time after visiting hours, and Joyce is already there. Murray is overwhelmed by a sudden immense gratitude for her, in a way he was too resentful to feel earlier. He needed to get out of that place, but he would never have left if he wasn’t absolutely certain Alexei would be cared for and watched over by someone he trusts.

He hasn’t eaten since about 7:30 in the morning, so he heats up a processed TV dinner, the only really edible thing in his kitchen at the moment. As the food is warming, he notices the bottle of vodka still sitting out on the counter from two nights before. He’d forgotten about his plan for when he had gotten home, well after 4:00 in the morning, after the battle with the monster: to start drinking and not stop until the sight of dead bodies felt distant and his grief and nerves had subsided enough to let him sleep.

That trauma still nags at the back of his mind, closer now that he’s alone and it’s late, the night absent of distractions to block out his memories of what he’s seen and heard. Even though the two of them hadn’t been at all close, he suddenly feels Hopper’s death like a hole in the chest. It feels like every reason he’s ever had not to let anybody into his life: too many mysterious circumstances and dangerous forces that never seem to lead anywhere except towards suffering for those he cares about. 

But right now—however inexplicably—they have led to a handsome young man in a hospital bed who did _not_ die. And as much as Murray’s mind wants to slip into that all-too-familiar spiral of anxiety and guardedness, the matter at hand is much more pressing. Alexei will be discharged soon, he thinks as he eats; Murray will need to go to the supermarket and get more foods that functional, healthy humans eat, and he should set up the pull-out couch for himself so Alexei can have the bed. He needs to keep an ear to the ground for news on the fallout of the Independence Day attack at the mall, and he should reinforce his own security measures just to be safe. Ordinarily after being compromised like this, Murray would relocate to a new place entirely; but he doesn’t think Alexei’s up to that yet, and there is still too much going on in Hawkins for him to consider going far.

So between bites of his over-processed TV dinner, Murray scours copies of newspapers—both recent and months old—searching for hints of a trail that the Russians might have left. This far away and over state lines, the town isn’t mentioned much in the Chicago publications, but Murray has copies of even smaller local papers that he can comb through. He knows what to look for; he just wishes there were more to find.

Dawn is breaking by the time he finally decides to stop. Murray stands up, looks down at himself—and realizes, for the first time in days, what a mess he is. He’s been wearing the same clothes for more than forty-eight hours, and slept in them twice since he didn’t bother changing before he fell into bed the morning before. Tentatively he sniffs himself, and immediately regrets it. The past two days have left him smelling sweaty and stale, and a glance in the mirror shows his hair is even more unruly than usual. Now that there’s even the faintest glimmer of light in the sky, Murray’s one-track mind is ready to go back to the hospital immediately. But judging by the state of him, maybe he should at least shower and change clothes before he does.

An hour later, clean and rested and with a little breakfast in him, Murray walks through the glass-doored entrance of the hospital. He’s been repeating the same phrase in his mind ever since he left the house: _Everything’s fine._ It has to be. He knows Joyce would have called if it wasn’t. But that anxious feeling the pit of his stomach won’t settle until he’s able to see for himself. And it’s not long—maybe five minutes from the main lobby until he reaches Alexei’s doorway—before he can.

“Murray!” Alexei greets him with audible excitement as he comes into the room. He’s having breakfast, with Joyce sitting next to him. The two of them smile conspiratorially at each other, and then Alexei repeats several words in English as Joyce feeds them to him in a whisper: “How—was—your—night?” 

His pronunciation is appalling, even more so because he’s so excited to be saying the words that he’s not paying attention to their accuracy. Murray stares, dumbfounded, and Joyce gives him a sheepish smile. “We had to do something besides sleep and listen to cartoons all day,” she explains. 

A surprised laugh stutters its way out of him, then, and he starts to walk over to them. “It was good,” he says in English, then in Russian he repeats, “хороший,” as he leans down and drops a small kiss onto Alexei’s forehead, heedless of Joyce’s presence in the room. There’s no way in hell she doesn’t know about them, after all.

The gesture still makes Alexei blush furiously, and he looks at Murray with a mixture of shock and anxiety in his eyes. Joyce’s eyes are wide too, but there’s no anger or judgment in them, and a smile is clearly creeping into the corners of her mouth as she strains not to comment on the moment of intimacy. Instead, she sees Alexei’s confusion and Murray’s growing vague uncertainty, and makes a split-second decision. “Well!” she announces. “I’m going to get some breakfast. By myself. So you guys can…talk.”

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for her to slip out of the room, but they feel like some of the longest moments Murray can imagine. He settles himself down onto the bed next to Alexei, who is frowning like he’s been presented with a math problem he can’t quite understand, and waits for whatever happens next.

“You kissed me,” Alexei eventually says, his voice small at Murray’s side. “Joyce was there. Did you tell her about us?”

He doesn’t seem angry, but he does seem—vulnerable, perhaps, and slightly anxious. Murray feels a small pang of guilt for initiating the affection without asking first. He trusts their present company, but people like them have more than enough reasons to be cautious (Alexei more so, as a Russian defector with no protections in this country). With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he realizes how unwise it was of him to compromise their safety in this way—baring the truth of their feelings into the open like that. 

“No,” he finally says, taking great care to make sure his voice is even and calm. “But I think she knew already. It will be all right. If you’re worried, we can pretend it was just a greeting between friends.” He hesitates, then adds, “She probably won’t believe it, but if we _say_ that she will pretend and not bring it up again.”

Alexei is playing with Murray’s hand, tapping the pads of his own fingers against Murray’s. “I trust her,” he says after a minute. “I just—I did not think you could do that so easily, here.”

Murray’s stomach still feels leaden, regret settling in the wake of his reckless gesture of affection. “You can’t,” he admits, “not really. Not most of the time, anyway. It was careless of me.” He strokes a hand through Alexei’s unruly curls—someone really needs to run a brush through his hair at some point—and breathes out heavily. “But I missed you.”

He feels Alexei’s hand squeeze his own. “I missed you too,” he whispers. “We didn’t think you would stay away for so long. I almost expected you to find a reason to come back before lunchtime.”

“I fell asleep,” Murray admits. “I was tired.” Alexei murmurs a faint _I told you so,_ too fond to be very accusatory. Murray ruffles his hair. “How was _your_ night?”

“I was tired too,” Alexei responds, and Murray notices anew the fatigue around the man’s eyes. “But it was nice to have Joyce here.”

Murray’s nerves begin to settle. He drops a quick kiss onto Alexei’s head at his hairline. “So what other trouble did the two of you get into, besides learning how to speak English?”

Alexei’s eyes light up, and he reaches for a book that’s lying on the table. “Well, she got me this…”

\---

Joyce stays away as long as she can without her absence seeming conspicuous.

She has a decent breakfast and a leisurely cup of coffee, reads a newspaper from a kiosk in the lobby, and then takes the long way back up to Alexei’s room, hoping she doesn’t find an argument in progress. In all honesty, she’d expected Murray to dance around the growing relationship between him and Alexei for much longer; she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d refused to admit it until she caught them in the act. (He probably wouldn’t lie if questioned directly, but Joyce would never force him to reveal that by asking point-blank for the truth. After all, when Will started to mature and his growing romantic feelings began to become _complicated,_ she gained his trust by not pressing the issue. She knows how important it is to let someone come to you in their own time.)

Luckily, the scene in the hospital room is much calmer than she’d feared. Murray’s chair is scooted up to the head of the bed, and they’ve lowered the guardrail so he can lean over next to Alexei, their heads almost butting together as they look at the word find book she’d brought yesterday. From what she can tell, they’re doing a puzzle on nature and the outdoors. 

The tableau is so sweet, it almost takes her breath away, and she lingers in the doorway for a moment, just to observe for a bit longer. She’s never seen Murray soft for anyone before, but it makes sense when she looks at it now. The past few days, he’d looked at Alexei like he was the first person worth talking to that Murray had encountered in years. She still remembers how distraught he’d been when the two of them stood over Alexei’s body. “I just went to get a corn dog,” he’d said, lost, and Joyce had known in that moment that his distress was more than just feeling responsible for leaving the man vulnerable to attack. He’d let someone get close to him, and then had them ripped away in the blink of an eye.

She’s glad that between the two of them, at least Murray gets to have that closeness back again.

Alexei points to a word they’ve just circled. “What is?” he asks in the halting English he’s been trying to learn since yesterday. 

“Leaves,” Murray replies, and Alexei tries it out for himself. _Livvs._ Murray translates for him. “Листья.” _List’ya._

They scan the page until they find another one. Alexei makes a soft triumphant sound when he sees the letters in the right order. “There, I found it,” he says in Russian, and then in broken English, “_Hee-king._ Yes?” Murray nods and says _hiking,_ and circles the word. Alexei turns his face toward him. “What is mean?”

“What _does_ it mean,” Murray corrects gently. “_Peshiy turizm_.”

There is nothing about the way they’re touching that is anything but decent, and yet the intimacy is strong enough to fill the entire room. Murray’s hand is resting on the bed, inches from Alexei’s thigh but not quite close enough to touch; Alexei’s breath ghosts against the side of the other man’s face in a way that suggests he would close the space between them if he could. 

The book of word searches had been a get-well-soon gift, a way to keep Alexei at least somewhat distracted from the pain and boredom of recovery. Even though the words themselves were in a language he didn’t understand, finding them required only pattern recognition; if he could find the shapes of the letters strung together in the right order, their meaning was irrelevant. Alexei proved surprisingly adept at it, and through the language barrier and the lethargy of his injured state she could see his sharp curiosity emerging. Before long he was asking for the meaning of words, making her act them out in a strange sort of Charades; he started learning to parrot back basic phrases as she taught them to him, too. 

It’s easy for Joyce to see why Murray likes him. Alexei is easygoing, almost childlike in his enthusiasm, single-minded and deeply inquisitive. He looks soft and nerdy, but he is strong as an ox and stubborn as one too. He’s good company even through the language barrier, it turns out; they know so little about each other still, even after the adventure they’d had together, but he still seemed to see her as a sort of friend. 

For all that they’d rolled their eyes at Murray’s anxious fussing, he’s not the only one inclined to worry; Joyce can see how the tension began to leave Alexei’s shoulders as soon as the other man returned. He’d been in a lot of pain yesterday, which they’d been able to ascertain through pantomime—Joyce pinching herself and saying “Ow!”, then motioning big or small with her arms so Alexei could indicate how much discomfort he was experiencing. Even with medication, he’d been tired and tense all day, and it had been hard for him to get comfortable enough for sleep. Eventually he’d gone to bed early, exhausted, and Joyce had stayed up for a few hours to watch him before finally letting herself get some rest too.

It had been sometime later at night, Alexei fading in and out of fitful sleep and Joyce beginning to doze herself, when she heard a few quiet murmured words in Russian. Her eyes fluttered open again. Alexei was looking at her, out of it with exhaustion and medication. She blinked and sat up a little. “Hmm?” she said, then tried to form words. “What is it? You need help?”

He recognized their code word and shook his head, waving his hand in a lax, aimless motion of denial, and she settled back into her seat. After a moment, he started talking again. The words, of course, were still in Russian—she understood nothing of what he was saying, other than once or twice catching the brief utterance of Murray’s name in his accented, slightly slurred speech. It seemed disingenuous, to pretend to understand what he was telling her. But she listened anyway, attentive as she would be if he were speaking in English, even if she couldn’t respond or react. 

Alexei trailed off, eventually, and silence filled the room for a minute or two. Then, much in the way he had, Joyce began to talk. She didn’t even realize what she was saying, didn’t even _think_ about it—just a constant stream of ideas pouring out of her, everything she hadn’t said aloud since the attack a few days ago. There had never been anyone to say it to before: how worried she had been for her sons, the terror of their mission to the Russians’ underground bunker, the agony of losing Hopper. How she still dreamed about him every night. Her voice caught, and the confessions felt like gravel in her throat, but she kept talking. 

Alexei listened the whole time, eyes half-lidded like he was starting to fall asleep. When she finally ran out of words to say, he murmured something in Russian—softly, gently—and though she could understand none of the words, she knew it was reassuring.

“Yeah,” she breathed, with no idea whether it was the right response to what he’d said or not. She’d stared down at her lap for what felt like a long time; when she finally looked up again, Alexei had dropped off to sleep, his head still tilted half-towards her. She waited until she was sure he was out for good, and then crept over and pulled the covers closer about him until he was wrapped up nice and snug, the way she’d done for Jonathan and Will when they were small. 

The flood of anxiety finally loosened in her chest, and when she settled back into her chair, she dropped off to sleep with no effort at all.

Now, in the present moment, she looks at Alexei and Murray huddled together like this, and she thinks: _maybe it’s gonna be okay. Maybe we didn’t lose so much after all._

\---

It takes longer than they’d hoped for Alexei to be able to come home. Deep down, Murray knows he’d been naïve to expect Alexei’s stay in the hospital to be only a couple of days. His body had been put through hell over Independence Day weekend; he’d been shot, his wound near-fatal, and left lying there without medical attention for much longer than he should have been under normal circumstances. He’d been dehydrated, at risk of infection, in desperate need of surgery, and deeply, _deeply_ exhausted when Murray had finally taken him to the hospital. Given all that, it would take more than a few days for him to be sufficiently recovered.

Still, a routine starts to emerge. Joyce comes up twice a week, for one day and night each time. She stays with Alexei while Murray goes home for a while, and then spends time with Murray so he has contact with someone other than Alexei and the battery of doctors and nurses that pass through. 

Just a few weeks before, he couldn’t fathom being away from Alexei’s side for more than fifteen minutes. But now that he is truly on the mend, most nights Murray goes home to sleep, even though it means leaving Alexei alone. The man’s team of night nurses stays mostly the same from day to day, and as time has gone by Alexei has learned how to communicate with them, largely nonverbally. He understands the general meaning of their questions and can indicate _yes_ or _no_, _a little_ or _a lot_. They perform the same checks every time, and other than those routine procedures he is allowed to rest uninterrupted. Alexei says he sleeps better when Murray is home, comfortable and resting himself. 

(This is true, except for the nightmares that plague him sometimes, of shadowy figures or genetically engineered monsters. On those nights, he wakes in a cold sweat and searches the room, frantic, for Murray. Sometimes when he doesn’t find him, he can feel himself plummeting into a panic—_they’ve come, they’ve taken Murray, I’ll never see him again_. But then he remembers: Murray is home, safe and asleep, and everything is fine. And he can calm himself enough to close his eyes and rest again.)

Of course, Murray can’t deny that he sleeps better at home too, much as he wishes Alexei were there with him. He wakes up now each day feeling better rested, calmer, more stable. And with that mental and physical recovery, other things start to return too.

Two weeks after Alexei’s stay in the hospital begins, Murray wakes from a light sleep at 3:00 in the morning. At first the only thing he registers is the warm haze of groggy half-consciousness, tinged with the awareness—at the back of his mind—that he’d been dreaming, although he doesn’t quite remember about what. Then he turns over to shift onto his stomach, and as he presses his front against the mattress, he realizes that between his legs, he’s _throbbing._

_Oh_, he thinks, blinking awake a bit further. Now the dream starts to come back to him: nothing concrete, just sensory details and the caress of hands he’s come to know well, but which have never yet touched him in this particular way. The feeling of arousal takes him by surprise; he’d been alone for such a long time, so accustomed to it that desire was an infrequent thing, and in recent days he’d been too tired and focused on his and Alexei’s mutual recovery to be aware of any other needs his body might have.

But, he thinks wryly, his body certainly seems interested in something else now. Gingerly he takes himself in hand, feeling the growing evidence of his pleasure before actively seeking to coax out more. The need for it, pushed so far to the background before that it was almost undetectable, simmers in him with a restless fervor now. Suddenly he wants Alexei so sharply and breathlessly it feels like an elbow jammed into his side. 

His breath shakes out of him on every stroke. It feels so good, to let his body warm to pleasure like this. He falls back on the only memory of this type he has of Alexei: making out with the Russian’s back against the wall, the slide of their lips together, the way he’d felt hot (although he now knows some of that heat was literally fever) and made the most delightfully filthy sound when their hips slotted together. Murray knows that if Alexei hadn’t been wounded, they would have had each other against that very wall that night. 

His hand speeds up without him even thinking to do it—his breath catches, a little gasp fluttering like a trapped bird in his throat—and with a shudder he comes across his belly. “Fuck,” he whispers, and for a moment all he can do is lie there and feel the tingling in his body as he comes down from the high.

He thinks he’s gotten it out of his system, but it turns out that indulging his newly awakening desire only intensifies it, rather than sating him. When he gets to the hospital room later that morning, Murray takes one look at Alexei and feels a deep blush spread across his cheeks, eyes darkening and dilating against his will. Alexei notices immediately. His eyes narrow, then widen slightly, and he murmurs in Russian: “Close the door, and cover the window.”

Murray does it, and then walks over to the side of the bed—but before he can get his bearings, Alexei is tugging him in by his shirtfront and kissing him with single-minded intensity. He moans helplessly into the other man’s mouth and braces a hand on his thigh, returning the kiss with fervor. It’s a direct conduit to the restless arousal simmering in his blood; he feels drugged with it. For a few minutes, they make out feverishly. Then Murray pulls away, lips wet from kissing and embarrassingly half-hard. “What the fuck,” he breathes, shaking out a laugh.

Alexei is breathing hard as well. “I couldn’t help it,” he stammers out in Russian. His expression is stunned; he looks a bit astonished at himself. “The way you looked at me when you came in…”

“I would say I’m sorry,” Murray says, leaning over again so their faces are close, “but how could I be, if _that_ is what it gets me?” He cups Alexei’s cheek in his palm and they kiss again, slow and deep and just a little dirty, until Alexei moans low in the back of his throat. “I’ve been turned on all morning. I dreamed about you last night.”

Alexei’s eyes on him are darkened, desirous. “It’s happened to me here too,” he says in a low voice (even though they’re alone and both speaking Russian, so no one around them will know what they are saying). Murray is unprepared for the static-shock of lust that goes through him at hearing that admission. “In the shower a few days ago, I started thinking about you. I had to take care of myself before I could come back out again, in case a nurse came into the room and saw me.” 

Murray swallows thickly. “Maybe it’s good that you are here,” he murmurs. “If you were home, I might not be able to keep my hands off of you.”

Alexei scoffs. “With me in this state? Somehow I doubt that.” Murray makes a sound of disagreement, and that puts a soft smile on the other man’s face. He nudges the American away. “Now go over there and let me cool off. A nurse will come in here eventually, and I don’t want to be hard when she does.” 

His voice is still a little thin, the sound of it making clear how badly Alexei wants the opposite of this—to feel Murray’s hand on him, touching him in all the places that feel good, bringing him the satisfaction he so desperately needs. Murray scrubs his hand over his face and nods, then goes to face the corner so they can both collect themselves. As turned-on as he is, he still doesn’t want their first time to be in a hospital bed with doctors and nurses around every corner.

When the doctor does come in, he brings good news with him: within the next two days, Alexei will be allowed to go home. He can’t move around much and the pain is still pretty intense most of the time, but he’s clear of the immediate risk of infection or serious complication and the doctor assures him he’s healing normally. 

“A gunshot wound like this often takes several weeks to heal even superficially,” he tells Murray, who is (uncharacteristically for him) translating the conversation as they go rather than summarizing it for Alexei later. “Because of the sensitive location of the injury, Mr. Smirnoff should remain seated or lying down as much as possible for the next few weeks.” (It takes everything in both Alexei and Murray’s willpower not to smirk or burst into giggles at the use of the false surname they had given the doctors, to ensure Alexei’s safety. _It is a common last name in Russia,_ Alexei had offered, when Murray had suggested it as a joke, and so it had stuck.) “I would counsel that he avoid bending at the waist as much as possible, since too much movement in that area will risk reopening the wound, and no heavy lifting until he is cleared to do so at a follow-up appointment. Make sure he gets one or two short walks each day to promote healing and prevent clotting, but nothing exertive.” 

“Do you hear that, Murray?” Alexei calls out as Murray goes to close the door after the doctor. “I’ll be going home soon, and then we can fuck!”

Murray chokes on air, and Alexei laugh so hard he cries.

\---

Alexei shocks awake from a deep sleep on his second night home from the hospital. For a moment he can’t move, only aware of his heart pounding.

Deep down, some part of him had hoped that when he left the hospital and came home with Murray, the nightmares would stop. But if anything, they’ve gotten worse. In his dreams, Alexei plays out traumas his mind refuses to examine directly in the light of day. Sometimes they’re visions of the horrible monster they’d conjured from the seam into another world, or a replay of the night he almost died at the carnival—but often the fears that emerge are deeper, more symbolic. Alexei dreams of reaching for Murray, as hard as he can, and never quite being able to touch him. He dreams he looks down and sees his stomach wound bleeding again, and it doesn’t hurt, but it’s also not healing and no one is coming to save him. 

He gasps awake with the scent of blood in his nose and the phantom feeling of its wetness on his skin. It’s so realistic he scrambles for his shirt, frantically lifting it to see that the bandage is in place, everything as it should be. His skin is buzzing with how frenzied his touch-starved craving for contact is. He chokes out a few breaths through his impossibly tight throat, aware that his breathing is fast and shallow and _wrong._

Next to him, Murray shifts and mumbles “Alexei?”, his hand aimlessly groping to find purchase on Alexei’s knee. Alexei feels like he’s going to shatter into pieces. As his awareness spirals down from his panicked awakening to the reality of the world around him, he realizes his body is aching, deep down to his bones. Everything smells like Murray, and the comfort of that mixes with his distress and overwhelms him with conflicting emotions: he’s terrified, and in a great deal of pain, and _strangely horny_, desperate for touch to sate the need for contact deep within his bones. He’s _here_, he’s safe, but the memory of the nightmare is still holding onto him, and he can’t _breathe_—

All of a sudden, without warning, Alexei is crying. He can’t control it, doesn’t even really know why he’s _doing_ it—he’s just overwhelmed: by the shock and relief of not being dead, and the residual fear of remembering how suddenly he’d gone from blissful freedom to inescapable peril in the blink of an eye. He hasn’t had a single pain-free night in weeks, and he’s just so _exhausted_, he can’t hold it back anymore. All of it comes crashing down on him at once.

His eyes clouded with tears, he feels rather than sees Murray shift closer. “Fuck,” Murray says under his breath, and then even gentler, “_Alyosha_,” the affectionate nickname he’s only recently begun to use. His arms come around Alexei, and Alexei is shaking his head even as he curls needily closer, trying to explain.

“It’s fine,” he chokes out, “I’m fine, I’m just—”

But Murray shushes him before he can finish. “I know,” he soothes, tracing his thumb along Alexei’s temple. “You’re hurting.”

The laid-bare truth of the words, searing in their simplicity, wrenches the next sob even more desperately out of Alexei’s throat. Dimly he is aware that his crying isn’t helping his injuries; the pain is intensifying from the way his muscles are clenching, so that his side will be throbbing later. But Alexei doesn’t register the pain other than to be vaguely frustrated at it, the way all of his newfound aches and vulnerabilities frustrate him—a buildup of agitation culminating in this emotional floodgate opened. 

Murray’s hands are on him; his body is against him; his lips are breathing _shh, shh, shh_ into his ear. He’s saying things in English that Alexei only barely understands: _it’s going to be okay, you’ll get better, you already are, I promise._ Alexei doesn’t need to know the word _promise_ to understand it. 

By the time his tears slow, he feels threadbare, like he’ll break apart any second. The awareness of his aching muscles creeps back in, and he sags down into the mattress, slightly defeated. But then he blinks and almost before he can realize it, Murray’s mouth is on his, gentle. The contact kindles something faint and warm in his heart, spreading through his tired body. He is loved; that in itself is enough to make him feel a little stronger.

Murray slips out of bed for a moment; when he returns, he has a glass of water and some of the pills Alexei is allowed to take when he really needs them. Alexei opens his mouth to protest—those are supposed to be for emergencies, when the pain is unbearable—but Murray silences him with a disapproving sound. “It’s bad enough,” is all he says, and Alexei feels his eyes water again at that. Being cared for like this is a novelty. 

Murray nudges him to lie back onto the bed and helps prop up his sore places with pillows so Alexei is comfortable. “I was turned on,” Alexei mutters, already drowsy again. It feels suddenly important that Murray know this, even though it was arguably the least of the many feelings he was having. “When I woke up. My body wanted you.”

His only answer, at first, is Murray nosing into the sensitive place at the hinge of his jawline. He kisses Alexei there, soft and teasing. Even as he’s fighting back sleep Alexei feels his sensitive nerve endings light up embarrassingly fast in response to even that crumb of stimulation. His breath stutters; a soft groan forces its way up into the back of his throat. 

“Not yet,” Murray murmurs into his skin. “But when it’s time, you will be ready.” Tired as he is, the promise in his voice makes Alexei shiver. Murray slings an arm across his waist and pulls him closer, and Alexei feels himself drifting rapidly into sleep, held fast and safe in the other man’s grasp.

\---

The Saturday after he is discharged, Joyce still comes up to visit, even though Alexei isn’t in the hospital anymore.

She shows up on Murray’s front step early in the afternoon, knocking insistently at the door and demanding to the security camera that he open up. “_Fuck!_ Shit, I knew I should have moved our location when I had the chance,” he bites out, but he still gets up to let her in, and Alexei knows he doesn’t actually mean it. He would miss the company if they covered their tracks and made themselves difficult to find; they both would.

Joyce bustles in then, laden with a duffel bag—clearly expecting to stay the night—and a couple of grocery bags. Alexei leans back on the couch and waves at her, cheery, and she puts her things down in the kitchen before leaning in to hug him at an awkward angle. “Hi Alexei,” she says, “how are you?” and Alexei shrugs and replies, “усталый.”

“He’s tired,” Murray translates automatically, from out of sight in the kitchen, where he’s rifling through the bags. “What the hell is all this? You planning to stay here for a year or something?”

Their bickering voices drift into a cozy background noise. Alexei watches as they go back and forth: Joyce is trying to put the groceries away and prep ingredients to cook them all dinner, and Murray—ever the control freak—keeps attempting to grab things out of her hands, shouting, “I’ll do it—_I will do it,_ Joyce, _God_—”

Alexei closes his eyes, sighs his breath out slowly, and for the first time in weeks, feels completely content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is now officially complete, and I don't think I'll be adding any additional chapters. However, I do have more material for these two in this universe- over 2000 words of it, in fact- and if I decide to post any of it, I'll make this into a series and link the fics together with this one. <3 
> 
> As always, you can find me on tumblr at [imaginedmelody](http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> I've marked this story as one-chapter and complete, but I'll be upfront and say that I'm not entirely certain that I'm finished with it. So keep an eye out, as its status might change and become multi-chapter at some point. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [imaginedmelody](http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com). I want to make absolutely clear that you are welcome to fill my inbox with messages about this ship AT ANY TIME. I've got a plethora of other fandoms and pairings going on right now too, so you know. Lots of variety in my fandom life.


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